Art in the rain

This past weekend was another cool washout in Seattle. The sun came out for just an hour on Saturday afternoon, and John rushed outside to block the raccoon's porch tunnel with some heavy lumber he bought at Home Depot. So their stinky house under our house is now off-limits, unless they care to do some serious digging. While he worked on that project, I took luscious pictures with my new digital camera and ran back and forth to the computer to see how they turned out.

On Sunday morning, after eating a high carb breakfast (hey, it's cold!) we left the house early and drove downtown to visit the Seattle and Frye Art Museums. Under the gray blanket of clouds, downtown was almost deserted except for a few chilly looking tourists who actually packed shorts and flip flops for their Seattle summer vacation. Ha!

Looking Down Yosemite Valley
Albert Bierstadt

The current Seattle Art Museum exhibition is called Beauty and Bounty, American Art in the Age of Exploration. We had the gallery almost to ourselves, and those big landscapes sparkled in ornate gold frames under perfect museum lighting. We liked the paintings, but it made you think about the rough wilderness camps where they were created. And how did the artists manage to get them back to civilization?

Leaving SAM, we drove a few blocks to the Frye Art Museum on Capitol Hill. Of course we were hungry again and had lunch with a peaceful indoor view of the drenched courtyard and a big round sculpture we always call the "mossy rock." My new camera has a "gourmet mode" for food shots, so I gave it a try:


The Frye was showing an unusual exhibit called Gabriel von Max: Be-tailed Cousins and Phantasms of the Soul. Max (1840–1915) was an artist, spiritualist and Darwinist and a remarkable 19th century German character. He was a highly educated naturalist fascinated with evolution, and over his lifetime collected a museum full of objects in the fields of anthropology and zoology. At the same time he created paintings with Christian and mythological subjects with themes of religion, death, spiritualism and the afterlife.

Outside the Arena
(A pensive and pretty Christian waiting to be martyred)

Portrait of a "Seer" having a vision

Religious angst and ecstasy

Toward the end of his life, his focus moved toward science. He collected pet monkeys, and his portraits of them became artistic metaphors for human behavior and personality. A fascinating and complex man.

And a good way for us to use up a rainy Sunday.